Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/739653
TEAM #RIDEHVMC DUCATI PANIGALE R RACER TEST P110 RICHIEALEXANDER T eam owner and former AMA Pro Road Racing Champion Richie Alexander has been around racetracks for most of his life yet the passion for his sport is still as strong as ever. The New Yorker is seeing the benefit of being the lone red team in MotoAmerica, which was a conscious business decision to further cement Hudson Valley Motorcycles as a premium Ducati dealer. Why did you choose to race Ducatis this year? You could have raced Kawasaki for con- siderably less as you're a Kawasaki dealer. Choosing Ducati was a business decision but, since becoming a Ducati dealer four years ago, I just appreciate what the brand stands for and I wanted to be a part of something different. Nothing's really been done in America [racing] for five, six years now. I thought it was time, since this machine's been having such success overseas, that somebody does it. John Freeman [the Freeman in Freeman Rac- ing], is actually a customer of mine, who has become a close personal friend. He and his family had an instant connection with Corey, and he fell in love with everything we at our dealership stood for. We bought him into our life because we share a pas- sion for racing—he's a Ducati guy and loves being involved in the sport but also the brand itself. How has the venture worked out so far? Great. Corey does a really good job of marketing, PR and the image with pretty much everything we do. I think this year we did a really good job getting the #RideH- VMC name out there. Corey came up with Ride HVMC. It's a catchy phrase. We car- ried it onto this year because I wanted to build a brand identity around Hudson Valley Motorcycle. We are not just a race team, we do track days and also custom builds. The whole idea was to build Ride HVMC up as the cool part of Hudson Valley Motorcycle. You starting to see results because of this branding process? Yeah, absolutely. We have a huge following. The event we did this weekend with the fire department, we got so much from that. It was done for 9/11. I didn't really expect the response that we got. Even in Europe we saw some reposts. That's helping punch along with the best four-cylinder bikes in the Superstock class. It takes a brave rider to snap the throttle on at 10,000 rpm on the Panigale R when cranked over because it launches at the horizon at this speed. Conversely, the higher revs put more stress through the monocoque chassis and it can become a handful when trying to slow for corners, tipping with incredible pace from upright to full lean that it catches me off guard a couple of times. The bike is so light the team has to add weight in the center of the bellypan to get the bike up to the minimum weight of 374 pounds. The #RideHVMC team uses K-Tech suspension in similar spec to what Shane Byrne and the Paul Bird Motorsport team run in the British Superbike Cham- pionship, as opposed to the Öhlins the bike was designed with. At my pace the K-Tech set-up feels superb, a little on the stiff side in the rear but every nook and cranny of the NJMP layout feels transmit- ted to my hands and bum, so feedback is certainly not an issue. That ultra-quick turn in is a personality trait from the Pani- gale family, allowing it to dive for apexes with amazing turn speed, if swapped for a touch less stability than the Japanese competition. The lean angles Corey Al- exander pulls on this beast are certainly impressive. The Ducati will stop on a dime thanks to the standard Brembo M50 calipers from the production Panigale R squeezed by a new Brembo 19 x 20 master cylin- der fitted by the team. The brakes offer outstanding stopping power, matched to the standard ECU's three-way Engine Braking Control (EBC) map that's taken almost half the season to get to Corey's liking. The EBC's job is to speed up the rear wheel to match the front by opening the throttle bodies just enough so you don't back the bike into turns, but, as Corey says, "When entering the turns, the adjustments the system was mak- The side-to-side turn speed of the Panigale R is seriously quick.